The assassin was still staring at him, waiting for the safety countdown to end, when May threw his torso forward. Moving with a speed that surprised them all, he slid into the bathroom with as much force as he could muster, slapping the steel disc across the floor. It skittered over the polished bathroom tiles like a hockey puck and thudded into the towels which had fallen against the far wall.
Berta released a howl of fear as the armed officer darted in and brought his knee up hard into the assassin’s stomach, punching the breath from him. The man landed hard on the floor as May twisted the bomb’s safety timer back.
‘Some help up here, please,’ he shouted, untying Berta’s ankles and pushing her from the room, out of harm’s way. As officers thundered up the staircase and prepared to take their prisoner, May leant against the wall to regain his breath, and realized how very, very tired he had suddenly become.
Behind him, still connected, the bomb’s countdown readout zeroed itself, jumped back to override: mins: 5:00, and began to flicker downwards once more.
‘Take him downstairs quickly,’ May told his men as he passed them on the stairs. ‘There’s still one assassin loose, in or around the house. Nobody’s safe until he can be found.’
51 / The Finger of Blame
‘Can we go in yet?’ complained Nigel Whitstable. The colours in his sweater were starting to blur together. Several of the younger ones had started to cry. ‘This is an absolute bloody outrage.’ Nigel looked around, as if noticing the police cars for the first time. ‘It would help if you were to explain what you’re hoping to achieve with all this . . . ridiculous fuss.’
Bryant and Sergeant Longbright were busy trying to settle as many of the children as possible in the cars. Most were treating the evening as an adventure, and had to be slapped away from the dashboard instrumentation.
May led Charles Whitstable’s sobbing mother out to join the group as the remaining police gathered around to help the family. Berta looked fragile and rather pathetic in the rain. As Bryant backed out of the last car he realized that everyone was staring at him, waiting to be told what to do next.
In this brief instant, for the first time, he almost felt sorry for them. Huddled together in the downpour with no coats or jackets, frozen, sopping wet, confused and utterly miserable, the Whitstables looked a hopeless lot. Whatever else happened he would always remember them like this, the bedraggled dynastic dregs, suspicious of everyone, capable of complaint but little else, waiting for someone stronger to direct them.
The moment was broken by Nigel Whitstable, who had come to the boil again. ‘When the papers get hold of this,’ he cried, poking Land in the chest with a bony forefinger, ‘you’ll be about as popular as the Gestapo. You’re finished, all of you! And especially those two pathetic hasbeens you call detectives!’
Bryant had had enough. He stepped forward and called for silence.
Behind him the neighbours were watching, standing in doorways with their arms folded, or peering from around their curtains. When everyone had finally stopped complaining, the detective began to speak.
‘You asked me earlier to tell you the cause of all this. You wanted me to point the finger of blame. I’ll tell you now, if you haven’t already realized.’ He drew himself to his full unimpressive height and studied the faces before him. ‘It’s you. The Whitstables. The company. The alliance. The family. The empire. You did this to yourselves.’
There was an immediate uproar. Finally, Berta made herself heard above the furious chatter.
‘What on earth are you talking about, you silly little man?’ she cried. ‘We would never knowingly harm ourselves. We know how to protect our own people.’
‘That, Madam, is precisely what caused the problem in the first place,’ retorted Bryant, growing heated. ‘If you want to accuse anyone, accuse James Makepeace Whitstable. If your ancestor hadn’t been so determined to keep your money from the hands of upstarts by killing them off, and if you hadn’t been prepared to pass on his secret from father to son, mother to daughter, then you wouldn’t have accidentally turned this destruction upon yourself.’ He strode angrily before them. ‘My God, instead of helping to cast out the dark and keep the fire of free enterprise alight—that precious symbol of the burning flame none of you professed to have any knowledge of—you’ve all become party to a new darkness. It’s been descending on you all this time, and not one of you noticed. All to preserve the values of your guild. Purity. Decency. The new bright light.’ He pointed at each in turn, unable to control the fury he and May had fought to keep in check since hearing of Alison Hatfield’s death.
‘You’re supposed to be the apex of civilization, but you’re just the opposite. The only thing at which you all excel is lying—to us, yourselves, and each other. And now that we’ve managed to save the rest of you, you’ll undoubtedly show your gratitude by having us thrown off the force. Well, go ahead, do your worst. Our job is ended here.’
He turned his back on them and stalked away, leaving the bewildered group gaping after him.
‘Sir,’ called PC Bimsley, ‘I just saw someone run in through the front door. He’s going upstairs.’
‘It can’t be one of us,’ said May. ‘Everyone’s outside now. Looks like you’ve found our last man—you’d better go after him.’
‘Yes, Sir!’ said Bimsley, sprinting off toward the house, going for the hat trick.
Just then, the entire upper floor of William Whitstable’s house exploded with a deafening roar that bounced off the houses and echoed across the city. The night sky billowed out in a boiling wave, causing their ears to sting. The surrounding trees were filled with the zing of scattering glass. Small pieces of blazing timber fell on the gathered assembly. The air was filled with an acrid stink as flames executed exuberant flourishes in the upper windows.
As the horrified Whitstables picked themselves up off the wet pavement, May climbed to his feet and ran back into the garden, searching for PC Bimsley. The constable was looking up at the roaring building with a dazed expression on his face.
‘I wouldn’t bother going in after him now, Bimsley,’ May said consolingly. ‘By the way, your jacket’s on fire.’
Behind them, the top floor of the house burned brightly on, a pyrogenic beacon that ignited the stars and stole the sombre blackness from the night.
52 / Inundation
Thank God we managed to get everyone out in time,’ said May later, as they were heading back towards the PCU’s offices in the Mini. At this hour of the morning it was safe for Bryant to drive, providing you weren’t a cat or a pigeon. ‘I thought you were a bit hard on them. Did it ever occur to you that it might be just as difficult for them to be who they are?’
‘If they don’t like it, they can opt out,’ replied Bryant. ‘It doesn’t work the other way around. The poor can’t choose to be rich.’ He stared thoughtfully out at the deserted streets of Camden Town.
‘Jerry Gates has been accepted as one of them now. Did you hear Charles Whitstable offered her a job? It will be interesting to see what she decides to do after this.’ May blew his nose. ‘Do you think I’ve caught pneumonia?’
‘It’s possible,’ said Bryant, never one to look on the bright side. ‘There’s a distinct chance that I may die in my sleep tonight. I can’t take the pace any more. I’ve got fallen arches, varicose veins, and now my valves feel bunged up. I don’t know how I got to middle age without passing through a misspent youth.’
‘I know what you mean. We haven’t done this much running about since that business with the Deptford Demon four years ago.’
‘Wait a minute, we can’t go home yet,’ said Bryant, slapping the wheel. ‘We have to pick up Tomlins and bring him in to the station.’
‘It’s ten past five, for heaven’s sake. Let someone else do it.’
‘We daren’t do that, John. We can’t risk losing him. Somebody on the inside has to relate the full story to Land before he submits his report. Nobody else knows about the astrolabe. Radi
o Longbright and tell her where we’re going.’
He turned the Mini around and headed for the Maida Vale address that Rand had given them.
The house they sought was pale and pebble-dashed, a bay-windowed thirties villa, far below the social standard of the Whitstables’ homes. On the fifth buzz, a middleaged woman in a quilted dressing gown opened the door and attempted to stifle a yawn. Bryant and May identified themselves, and asked to see her husband.
‘I’m afraid you’ve missed him.’ She waved a hand in the direction of the garage adjoining the house. ‘He got a phone call, said he had to go out, that it was to do with work. I didn’t understand what he meant. I mean he’s not a doctor, he doesn’t get house calls.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘About half an hour.’
‘Did he say where he was going?’ asked Bryant.
‘I’ve no idea.’ She rubbed her pale cheeks, trying to remember. ‘Wait, he said he was seeing someone called Rand.’
The city was still deserted at five forty-two a.m., as the yellow Mini slid to a halt outside the entrance hall to the Worshipful Company of Watchmakers. The front doors of the guild had remained closed since the night of Alison Hatfield’s death.
‘I don’t want to alert him in case he does a runner,’ said May. ‘How are we going to get in?’
Bryant smiled and dug into his overcoat. ‘I still have Charles Whitstable’s keys,’ he reminded May. ‘We’ll have to bring in poor old Rand as well, you know. I bet Tomlins will try to swing the blame on him.’
‘You want me to call for backup?’ asked May, looking about.
‘After what we’ve been through tonight, I think we can handle the two of them.’
They alighted from the car and walked to the door. Bryant unlocked it as quietly as possible and stepped inside. The foyer was dark and empty, and answered their footsteps with muted echoes. Switching on their torches, they made directly for the staircase at the rear of the building. Using the lift would only draw attention to their approach.
‘I’m starting to feel like a mole, all this burrowing around by torchlight,’ said Bryant, gingerly descending to the lower landing. ‘Can you hear something?’
From the darkness below them came the sound of an angry, ranting voice. They increased their pace, descending through the mire of the lower floor. Rand’s office was deserted. They tried the room that housed the astrolabe. The emergency-lighting circuit evidently ran from a generator, for the bulb above the huge brass globe was still lit.
They found Tomlins standing over the little Indian with the sledgehammer in his hands. Rand’s twisted, terrified figure on the floor suggested that he may already have been struck.
Tomlins started at their arrival, his dismayed, disapproving face turned to them.
‘Get back,’ the guild secretary warned. ‘This has to be ended properly.’ He turned to the prostrate figure beneath him and swung the hammer once more, slamming it into Rand’s back. ‘I should crush his skull for what he’s done,’ he explained dispassionately.
‘What has he done?’ asked May, stepping closer.
‘He’s destroyed everything. Betrayed his sacred trust. To the alliance, to the guild, and to the family.’
‘He didn’t know what the machine was capable of doing.’
‘Well, it can’t do anything now, can it?’ He raised the sledgehammer again. ‘All the work, all the years of loyalty and hardship and duty, all for nothing.’
As the weapon began its descent May grabbed Tomlins’s forearm, forcing the hammer back. With a terrified moan, the supervisor scrambled painfully across the floor, heading for the safety of his office. As the two men grappled with the hammer, Bryant tried to pull Tomlins down from behind.
The guild secretary was stronger than either of them had expected. He pushed Bryant away with one hand and threw himself backwards, slamming May hard against the wall once, then a second time. Bryant heard his partner’s skull thump hard on the bricks and watched as he fell into the water. Tomlins turned on Bryant, his teeth bared in fury, and swung the sledgehammer, the weight of its iron head carrying the momentum of the swing.
Bryant jumped back and realized that he was pressed against the edge of the astrolabe. Stumbling, he found himself inside its structure, the brass rings protecting him from his enraged attacker.
The hammer swooped again and smashed against one of the globe’s support poles. The machine clanged sonorously as the blow reverberated through the rings. Bryant’s torch was shocked from his hand. He fell back against the defunct central housing. Another blow hit the poles and they buckled. The entire structure was creaking and starting to turn. Bryant tried to raise himself up in the water, but found the brass arms of the inner ‘planet’ descending on him. In another moment the astrolabe had twisted from its stand to seal him inside.
‘You’re not going to get away,’ called Bryant, gasping for breath as one of the brass bars was brought to rest on his chest. ‘It’s over. Your rivals are still alive. The tontine was faulty. It reset all the clocks and killed the family instead. It failed you.’
Tomlins did not reply. Instead, he walked away from the shattered globe to the far side of the room and began to swing the hammer at the seal of the drain door behind him. Instantly, Bryant realized the danger of his predicament.
Bryant’s mind was racing. The old Indian, Rand, had possessed no knowledge of the astrolabe’s assassins, so there had to be an overseer. Someone was needed to organize the details, to take care of payments and arrangements, to help with the cover-ups. Bryant had considered Charles Whitstable most likely to be the remaining link in the chain of command.
But Charles had been handling business in India. It had to be someone in daily contact with the guild. Tomlins had most certainly watched Alison Hatfield getting closer to the terrible truth. Finally he’d been forced to remove her. But there was more Bryant had to know.
‘If you were aware of the astrolabe’s existence, you must have seen that it was inaccurate,’ he shouted, trying to slide his body from the grip of the brass arm as a blackeyed rat swam past, inches from his face.
Tomlins lowered the sledgehammer for a moment and wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘Who’s to say it was inaccurate?’ he said. ‘It was designed to protect the Watchmakers’ investments. The Whitstable family does little more than leech from the guild. Let them all die, and return the money to the system’s administrators.’ He swung the hammer at the wall again, and this time the lock cracked, releasing a fine spray of filthy water around its edges.
‘If anyone deserves to benefit, it’s the craftsmen,’ cried Bryant. ‘Without them there would be no guild in the first place.’
‘Three generations of my family have worked for the Watchmakers,’ said Tomlins, grunting as the sledgehammer dented the door. ‘All of them were paid a pittance for guarding someone else’s fortune, and all were sworn to secrecy. Where did it get us?’
‘So the money was coming in to you,’ said Bryant weakly. Realizing that the astrolabe had failed, Tomlins had discovered an advantage over his employers. Bryant tried to free himself from the pressing weight of the metal exoskeleton, but was unable to budge any further. His partner had not moved since he was hurt. He prayed May hadn’t drowned while unconscious.
‘It was until you interfered,’ Tomlins replied.
His next swipe burst the drainage hatch wide. A black fountain rained across the chamber. Bryant knew that Tomlins would easily be able to flood the room, and noone would ever find their bodies. He would be able to claim his share of the tontine after all.
Icy drainage water poured into the shallow depression within the area of the globe, raising the level around the trapped detective. The temperature fell sharply as the vault became filled with the stench of the sewer.
The bitter water swirled itself around Bryant’s trapped body as he strained against the imprisoning brasswork. May had fallen with his head propped up against the fallen bricks, so the risin
g river was still clear of his nose and mouth. Only Longbright knew where they were, and she had no cause to be alarmed. On the contrary, she would be expecting both of them to take a few hours’ rest before reporting in to Land.
To perish in such an ignominious fashion as this was terrible. To die below the streets of the city he loved, within its very heart. Bryant wished he was at home, surrounded by his records, his books, and his memories. It seemed such a grotesque, undignified way for life to leave him.
He twisted his head to watch as Tomlins swung insanely at the wall. In his impatience to fill the room, he was trying to open up the entire drain. Each blow carried the frustration of a blunted life. The wall was cracked in several places, and had begun to bow outwards.
Tomlins, blinded by his bitter zeal, driven by a lifetime wasted in subservience, once more charged the bricks with his sledgehammer. Suddenly the concrete membrane bulged and split wide in a tsunami of water and brick. Tomlins was lifted from his feet and hurled backwards as the deluge burst over him, slamming him against the fallen astrolabe.
As the unleashed river rocked his metal prison, Bryant seized the moment, shoving against the brass bar across his chest. He could summon little strength. The freezing water was rapidly dulling his senses. He hammered against the bars again, and was astonished to find the cage rising of its own accord.
‘You’re pleased to see me this time, are you?’ asked Jerry Gates, holding out her hand. Amazed, unable to catch enough breath to reply, Bryant reached out and allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. ‘John!’ he gasped, pointing to the figure floating facedown in the rising water.
Jerry steadied him and set off to help his partner.
Bryant pushed himself free of the mechanical rings and began wading across the room to help her. Through the hole in the wall he watched as the black torrent rushed past. The stench rising from its foul waters was unbearable. The river of darkness thundered on beyond the shattered wall, denied access to the world above.
Seventy-Seven Clocks Page 40